


Cold hands, Warm Heart

by StarlingGirl



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Established Relationship, Frottage, Hair Washing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-17
Updated: 2017-01-17
Packaged: 2018-09-18 05:22:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9369839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarlingGirl/pseuds/StarlingGirl
Summary: 'Faraday looks at the bath, and then back at Vasquez.“Your ribs are aching,” Vasquez says, simply – as if that worryingly astute knowledge is clear excuse for his actions. Whatever else it is, though, it is true – and the thought of warm water easing that ache is too much to pass by.'For the prompt 'hair-washing'. There is a bath and there is oddly sweet sex between two cowboys who haven't quite figured it out yet.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sublightsleeper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sublightsleeper/gifts).



> This prompt was originally filled on tumblr. I am a sucker for Faraday and Vasquez and their inability to talk about emotions like rational adults, so while this was originally just going to be hair-washing and sex, some feelings managed to sneak their way in there too.
> 
> You can find me at sofaradaysogood.tumblr.com and I selectively accept prompts there, though I don't actually usually write porn. Honest, gov. It just slipped out.
> 
> I'm not sorry about this.

They don’t always ride together.

Sometimes they part ways. For convenience or for safety or just because they’re not used to sticking with so many people for so long. They find their way back, eventually. ‘Seven’ isn’t constant. It’s a mercurial thing.

Faraday and Vasquez take off the day the first frost falls.

They don’t decide, not out loud. They just tie up their saddle bags, and look at each other, and know. They’re gone minutes after their goodbyes.

It feels good to ride fast and free.

But winter’s settling in, and they’re further north than Faraday would like. The hoar frost on the leaves is thick and white and doesn’t melt until past noon. The ground rings like iron under Jack’s hooves. When they camp, it’s without the pretence of shyness; they wrap themselves up together, limbs intertwined and bodies pressed closed to savour whatever warmth they can.

Faraday has always hated the cold.

The winter seems worse than ever, this year. The cold works its way into his bones and sets wounds he’d thought closed to aching. It never seems to leave his fingers and his toes, no matter how close he holds them to the fire, or how long he holds them against the warmth of Vasquez’s skin.

He tries not to let on just how miserable he is. Vasquez isn’t fooled. He’s spent the years of his life fooling men for a living, but sometimes he seems powerless in front of Vasquez. The man can read him like an open book.

Faraday wakes one morning to find himself curled under a pile of blankets next to a crackling fire, piled high with logs, half devoured – alone. Panic rises in his gut. Vasquez is gone and so too, is his horse – but his bags are still here, and Faraday takes comfort in that, though it doesn’t fully quench his worry. He pulls the blankets closer around himself, huddles and waits.

The fire eats its steady way through its fuel, hungry.

It’s less than an hour before the sound of hooves clattering against the iron-hard ground rouses him from the half-doze he’s fallen into as he stares at the flames. Vasquez’s breath wreathes soft, white puffs of air in front of his face. He dismounts, and Faraday is already opening the blankets for him to fold himself into.

He curses as cold fingers quest at his ribs.

“Keep them to yourself,” he grumbles, but then pulls Vasquez closer, anyway. “Where you been?”

“Looking.”

Faraday huffs a breath at the short answer, and tucks his head down against Vasquez’s shoulder, pulling his blankets higher. “Yeah? Anything in particular, or you just felt like a little sight-seeing?”

“I found what I was looking for,” Vasquez answers, enigmatically, and won’t say any more. Faraday prods a few minutes longer, and then settles reluctantly into not knowing.

Once he’s warm, Vasquez coaxes Faraday out of the blankets and to pack up his saddle bags. Faraday does so, keeping a blanket slung around him against the chill. When they kick dirt over the fire and pull themselves into the saddle, he’s already retreated into an unhappy knot of his own aching cold.

More than once Faraday asks where they’re going, and Vasquez turns his questions aside.

At last, after a little more than an hour, something looms out of the chill mist. A homestead, or something like it; the logs stacked against its side are coated in a carpet of moss, the plot of earth in front of it tangled with knots of dry and dead roots that have overgrown their welcome.

Smoke rises from the chimney, for all that the place looks abandoned. Faraday sends Vasquez a questioning look.

Vasquez shrugs. He’s gotten good at finding places people have forgotten.

“This is where you were?”

“You are cold and miserable, _guero_ ,” Vasquez points out, no regard at all for Faraday’s determination to pretend to be otherwise. “We wait out the frost here. Or we ride south.”

Faraday could argue. He could succumb to his pride and pretend that the cold doesn’t lance through his scars like the bullets that made them. He could laugh and say that he doesn’t need babying. Instead, he dismounts clumsily. Numb, aching fingers fumble to replace saddle and tack with a blanket.

The house is old. In places, wood has rotted and crumbled, leaving inside and outside less well-separated than they ought to be. Still, Vasquez had clearly built a sizeable fire before he’d left, and though it’s burning low in the grate, now, the warmth has saturated the room enough that his face and fingers sting with it.

Some of the tension bleeds from his shoulders. It brings a little uncertainty, too, because without that biting cold, will they wrap themselves in their own blankets? Will they be reluctant to tangle themselves together so easily?

But then Vasquez insinuates himself behind Faraday, ducking his head to press his lips to the cold skin above Faraday’s collar, and the doubts begin to thaw.

“There’s no corpses in here, is there?” he asks, remembering what he’d heard about Sam’s first encounter with Vasquez. Vasquez’s laughter ghosts across his neck, breath hot enough to feel like burning against his skin.

“No,” he assures Faraday. “No dead men.”

Faraday hums his approval. Vasquez tucks a kiss behind his ear, and nudges him towards the pile of tinder by the fire. Faraday goes gladly, stacking on more of the wood which Vasquez must have spent time collecting before he’d returned. It’s damp, and it spits, but it’s dry enough to catch.

Behind him, he hears a clatter. Turning, he sees Vasquez dragging a tin bath through the doorway from another room, and fixes him with an incredulous look.

Vasquez ignores him, dragging the bath in front of the fire and dusting his hands off, satisfied.

Faraday looks at the bath, and then back at Vasquez.

“Your ribs are aching,” Vasquez says, simply – as if that worryingly astute knowledge is clear excuse for his actions. Whatever else it is, though, it is true – and the thought of warm water easing that ache is too much to pass by.

Vasquez disappears once again and comes back with two large buckets, a little rust-speckled but still serviceable.

“There is a pump outside,” he says. “You stay.”

And he disappears back into the cold, willingly, only returning when both buckets are full. They heat the water nearly to boiling over the fire and fill the bath one bucket a time, Vasquez traipsing back and forth bucket by bucket until the bath is full, steam gently wreathing itself across the surface.

Faraday strips his clothes off without hesitation, and when he lowers himself into the water, the noise that leaves his mouth is barely human.

It’s hot.

It’s something more than just not-cold, or even warm; it’s hot enough to turn his limbs pink and leave him short of breath. It’s nothing less than heavenly. He tips his head back, and relaxes into the way that the cold-induced ache in his ribs begins to leech itself from beneath his skin.

He opens his eyes, and finds Vasquez grinning down at him, somewhere between soft and salacious.

“There’s room for two,” Faraday points out. “Probably. If you don’t mind the squeeze.”

Vasquez shakes his head, and casts around the room for something to sit on. There’s a low stool on its side in the corner; he turns it upright and sets it by the side of the bath, near Faraday’s head. Fingers drag through the water, casting ripples through it. Faraday sighs, content.

“This is nice,” he says, and means _thank you_.

“You’re no used to me when you are hurting, _guero_ ,” Vasquez says, and means _you’re welcome_.

Faraday lets his eyes slide closed again and hums his happiness, slipping a little deeper into the water. Vasquez’s fingers, as they are wont to do, tangle in his hair. A slow heat pools in his belly, but he’s too comfortable to do much more than curl his toes and lean his head into the touch.

The retreat of Vasquez’s hand draws a sound of protest. He hears the Mexican rummage through one bag, then the other, and return eventually with what turns out to be a bar of soap which Faraday didn’t even know they had.

He accepts it with good grace, and tries not to notice the way Vasquez watches him as he cleans himself at a leisurely pace. He submerges his head under, too, for good measure – drags the palms of his hands over his face and re-emerges. Fingers that are not his rake his hair back from his face.

And then, Vasquez takes the soap and with firm, methodical fingers, he begins to wash Faraday’s hair. There’s something hypnotic about the pressure against his scalp, the circular rhythms that Vasquez works at relentlessly.

By the time Vasquez is done, the water is tending toward lukewarm and Faraday himself is tending towards a heavy-limbed drowsiness.

Vasquez coaxes him from the bath with a blanket that’s been near enough the fire to pick up some of its warmth. Faraday _folds_ himself into Vasquez’s arms, limbs loose and skin soft, fingers drawn to wrinkling by the water.

His head turns, nosing gently at Vasquez’s neck, tucking open affection against the heat of skin. He’s half-hard just from the insistent drag of Vasquez’s fingers against his skin, from the way those dark eyes had followed the droplets of water tracing down neck and pooling at its base.

Vasquez exhales, shakily. His fingers clench themselves in the blanket, dig hard into Faraday’s back, and then unclench, abandoning their grip on the blanket in favour of sliding themselves against Faraday’s still-damp skin.

Faraday is always expressive, responsive. His poker face might be well-practiced at the table, but take away his deck and it seems that he’s helpless. Vasquez’s hand finds the hollow at the base of Faraday’s spine and the Irishman arches into the touch, indrawn breath leaving the barest scrape of teeth against Vasquez’s neck.

Vasquez curses, low, in Spanish. He pulls Faraday towards the room at the back of the small house that still has a bed. It’s musty and mildewed, but it’s dry and they’re neither of them fastidious – and Vasquez is far too occupied with the way Faraday is pressing close, responding easily to the barest of touches. Pliant. He lays Faraday down.

A fire kindles itself low in his gut at the heady sight of Faraday, bare and heavy-lidded, languid before him. He stretches, lazy, like a cat, and the shift of muscle like knotted rope beneath skin is a distraction. Faraday plants the sole of one foot on the thin mattress, knee bent up, and the other falling to the side. He’s more at ease than Vasquez has ever seen him, not an ounce of tension left in the lines of his bones.

Standing above him, still fully dressed, sets his heart thundering, somehow. Faraday is laid out before him like a gift.

Almost reverent, he reaches out to drag fingers under crooked knee. Faraday follows the touch, without protest, his leg dropping down. Vasquez’s breath hitches in his throat at this trust, awarded without question.

His hand slides up Faraday’s thigh, flattens itself at hip, and he marvels at the way the man’s head falls back, the way he seems to draw into the touch, until his hips are pressing up and away from the bed, unwilling to allow a hair’s breadth of distance between himself and Vasquez’s hand.

He feels drunk with want. Some part of him wants to surge forward, to trap Faraday under his own weight and bite and kiss and lick and _take._ Another part wants –

– he starts slow.

His thumbs find the divot of hip-bones, hold Faraday down when he tries to lift into the touch. Fingers rise to slide along ribs, brushing scar after scar as they go. A palm skates up the flat plane of his abdomen, brushing through the low trail of hair and up, smoothing across sternum. Fingertips trace the curl of pectoral, and nails drag after. He dips digits into the hollow of Faraday’s neck, and then splays his hand wide across bared throat.

Nothing is neglected. Arms and hands and wrists and down to the sensitive skin at nape of knee, he patiently covers it all until Faraday is a writhing, keening mess. The ghost of Vasquez’s touch is everywhere except on his cock, and Faraday aches with it. A different ache to that of the cold. A sweet, building ache that feels too big to be contained.

“Vasquez,” he mumbles, over and over, and when that doesn’t work, “Feliciano,” and when that doesn’t work, it’s just “ _please_ —”. And yet, still, he follows that touch. When Vasquez pushes his arms up, above his head, they go willingly. When he nudges Faraday’s legs, they part.

He replaces hands with lips. Tongue and teeth travel the territory charted so thoroughly with his fingers. Words are dropped against Faraday’s heated skin amongst the kisses, English and Spanish alike. He can barely tell them apart, any more, losing his certainty somewhere between mind and tongue. Vasquez himself is straining against his pants, breathless at the exquisite responsiveness of the body beneath him, the sounds of Faraday’s abortive gasps and hitched breaths and choked-off moans.

When Vasquez gives in, it’s sudden.

The sound of his belt unbuckling pulls something from Faraday that’s almost a _sob_ of relief, and when Vasquez’s weight is above him abruptly, he presses up with trembling limbs to offer messy, open-mouthed kisses that are returned in kind.

He doesn’t push off his pants. Faraday is a wreck beneath him, almost at the edge already. Too much time, he tells himself, to strip himself naked, and ignores the fire in his veins that whispers that he _likes_ it, that’s getting off on the imbalance, somehow. To have Faraday, usually so guarded, so flippantly closed-off, open and vulnerable and willing underneath him.

Faraday is begging, a constant string of _please, god, please, now_ and Vasquez’s tongue trips over its own outpouring, _Joshua_ and _querido_ and _yes, good, you’re perfect, you’re beautiful._ He presses down against the body beneath him, hissing pleasure at hot flesh against hot flesh, and the reflexive buck of Faraday’s hips draws a groan from deep in his chest.

He runs a hand down Faraday’s thigh, exerts a little pressure. Faraday folds his leg up, still biddable, even now. Vasquez buries his head in Faraday’s neck as he rolls his hips, teeth worrying at flesh without a care as to the marks they might leave. Faraday’s jaw tips, neck bared further and his own hips desperately seeking what he needs.

“I can’t –”

Faraday’s words are strained, jaw set in determination, and with a jolt of lightning down his spine, Vasquez realises that Faraday is holding himself back. For him. He swears, licks a stripe up Faraday’s neck and lifts his head so that his eyes, dark and wide with want, meet Faraday’s, green and dazed and unfocused and beautiful.

     “Then don’t,” he urges. “Come on, _guerito_.”

That’s all it takes. Faraday comes undone with a sigh, shoulders rising from the bed as his stomach muscles clench and pull, and Vasquez feels his release, hot between them. Faraday is shuddering and gasping and somewhere in there is his name, _Feliciano_ and not _Vasquez_.

He bites at Faraday’s fair skin again as he comes, hips stuttering and breath skittering wild in his chest.

Silence spreads through the house, warming it more than fire does. Only two sets of harsh breathing, staccato and arrhythmic, break it. Carefully, Vasquez lowers himself down next to Faraday, whose eyes are closed and whose fingers tremble as they reach out to touch, to claim, to rest on whatever part of Vasquez they can find. Vasquez covers them with his own.

His eyes flicker open only when he feels fingers trace the line of his jaw, and he smiles a weak smile, loose and easy and real.

   “You are beautiful, like this,” Vasquez tells him, voice hoarse and deep. There’s no quip, no _I’m beautiful all the time._

“It’s for you,” Faraday says, and his eyes flutter closed once more, exhaustion tugging heavy at him and leaving him honest. His words are mumbled before they falter, and fade. “All of me. Just yours.”

 


End file.
